Applications that include or are configured for use with a speech recognition interface enable users to interact with the application via voice commands. In developing such applications, a developer may configure the application to respond to words that may be spoken by a user in one or more languages. In many situations, a user who speaks a native language will utilize the application. While interacting with the application, the native language user may provide a voice command that contains one or more words in a different, non-native language. For example, where the application is a media content application and the user is a native French speaker, the user may speak a voice command to play a song title that contains one or more English words.
Automatic speech recognition can be challenging in such cross-language scenarios, i.e. when a native speaker of one language (L1) speaks words from a different language (L2) which leads to non-native pronunciations. Such challenges may arise from differences in the phonological, phonetic or phonotactic structures of the native language L1 of the user as compared to the non-native language-origin L2 of the word. In these situations, the pronunciation of the word in the non-native language L2 by the native speaker of L1 may differ from the pronunciation of the word expected by a speech recognition interface.
Further, developers of applications that support such cross-language scenarios may fail to recognize such word recognition challenges when developing their applications. In these cases, the developers may proceed with development and include non-native language words that may be spoken by users who speak a different, native language. In some situations, cross-language speech recognition issues with one or more words may not be identified until late in the development process, such as during beta testing with actual users. In other situations, such cross-language speech recognition issues may go undetected and be recognized after the application is in the field and user complaints are received. In either case, implementing fixes at these stages can be disruptive and costly.